Tuesday, February 21, 2012

Of Mice and Mend

I ordered this from a seller who maintains a storefront on Amazon. It's a Logitech MX 1000 laser mouse which at least to me is the best mouse ever produced. I'm not alone in this opinion either. To more than the chagrin of many, Logitech discontinued the MX 1000 mouse about 5 years ago, however since than it has garnered something akin to a cult following with "still in the package" versions selling for $300-$400. Refurbished ones over $200. (See price list below)

One of the programable buttons stopped working on my 6 years-old MX 1000 mouse. But even after 6 years, the internal battery rarely needs recharging even after I've forgotten to place the mouse back into the recharging cradle throughout an entire day. I do take hours off from the Internet if you were wondering, lol. You may indeed spend more time with your mouse than you do with your significant other or with your kids. I understand and leave it at that. The point is that I paid $60 for the mouse plus a reasonable $5 for shipping and handling and it's well a necessary item around here. It was advertised as a 'used item' in 'very good' condition. The seller Emailed me these photos.

What makes this particular mouse better than the rest is the thumb rest on the side of the mouse. Actually, though, you end up not resting your thumb on the thumb rest but instead on the very edge of the thumb rest ledge. This led me to believe the average mouse is designed too narrow. Think about it .... the wider the mouse is, the more comfortable it is moving it around with your palm with your thumb in a more natural position, that is, a thumb not curled into your palm. When you reach out to shake someone's hand, your thumb's not next to your palm. Ditto when you rest your hand on the desktop .... look where your thumb is in respect to the rest of your hand.

You already know this, but what separates humans from apes and monkeys is that humans have an agile thumb that can be manipulated to face the palm of the hand. But that function is primarily reserved for gripping and if you keep gripping any object for too long your hand would grow numb. Thusly, narrow mouses may look sleek and all that, but they're mindlessly designed for monkeys and apes who don't know a thing about surfing the web or navigating through a webpage. The thumb in it's relaxed position rests apart from the rest of the hand. You rarely keep your thumb in contact with the rest of your hand unless you hold your hand sideways. For normal people. Unless you're under stress. Like digging for your last coins in your pocket to pay for a 99¢ burger. Never ever done that?

On a technical forum that I'm a member of, another member mentioned something about knockoffs. When a company discontinues producing a kitchen appliance, etc. overseas in a foreign country, the contracted company is suppose to immediately cease and desist manufacturing the items under the terms of the original contract at the termination of the arrangement between the two parties. However, we know that's not how things work. Instead the overseas company continues to manufacture the same items rebranding the contraband to hide their tracks and marketing the knockoff through their own devices.

This amounts to a niffy savings for the consumer .... until the overseas manufacturer exhausts their supply of surplus material that met the specs set by the contracting party. After that, the knockoffs that are produced with substandard materials generally don't last. For example, the switch in a rebanded blender fails because the switch in this instance was shoddy to begin with. With the MX 1000 mouse there's a few Internet sellers mainly in Hong Kong advertising 'new' MX 1000 mice for under a $100. This could go either way though since a mouse doesn't require difficult to find parts and materials not readily available from electronic equipment suppliers.

This I simply don't get .... why would anybody want tweeter that they bought a particular item. Even a MX 1000 mouse. Perhaps, I'm missing sumpthing.

2 comments:

Kay- I'll have to wait 2 weeks for the mouse to get here then we'll find out how much a 'steal' it is. The seller responded within a few hours with the pics that I requested so that's worth something in itself. He didn't post pics at his Amazon site. Just the generic photo so he may have taken them just on my behalf.